Tisamenos and the Gorgon [Extract]
Extract from The Arrow of Apollo by Philip Womack
This extract is taken from The Arrow of Apollo. Tisamenos, the son of Orestes, has been sent to fetch the head of the Last Gorgon. The Swallows are a revolutionary organisation, bent on bringing down the House of Atreus, and they are testing the young prince.
Immediately the cold sought out his bones. This was a dank, dark place, one that nobody had been into for years. Surprisingly, this made Tisamenos feel better. There were no robbers or brigands to deal with. He wedged the torch in a cleft near the entrance, and the flames spread their light across the walls. The dampness seemed to get in everywhere, into his mouth and down into his lungs. The stench of a rotting dead animal hit his nostrils. He faltered for a moment, stumbling, and almost fell to the rocky ground. Then he righted himself, and lit the second torch, which he placed in a narrow fissure. He could now see that the cave was quite large, and that it seemed to lead into a tunnel that went further into the mountain’s roots.
A slight sense of panic began to grip him. He wasn’t prepared to go that far. But there was no sign of a Gorgon’s head, or of anything else, on the cave floor around him. He began to curse his foolishness. Even so, he gripped his sheild hard and unsheathed his sword; biting his lip, he went further in.
A rustling sound made him halt. Instinctively he turned so that he wasn’t looking directly at it. In the shield’s mirrored surface he saw a form, its outline that of a woman. He almost sighed with relief. It must be one of the Swallows, come to tell him that he’d passed. Maybe that was the test - simply to come to this awful place.
The woman remained still, and for a moment he observed her in the shield. In the glow of torchlight she was beautiful. Long golden tresses hung around a smiling face. She beckoned to him. He didn’t recognise her from the meeting, but he said, ‘Did I pass?’
He would have put down the shield there and then. But the woman’s tresses were moving strangely, as if stirred by a breeze. His skin began to prickle. There was a hissing, and the long, thick locks of hair became a mass of setting, spitting snakes.
It was her. She hadn’t died, after all. Confusion rushed through him. The Swallows had sent him to his death.
It was the Last Gorgon.
What could he do? He could turn and run now, and return with a mob of townspeople. He looked at the woman’s reflection, her face now sharpening, lenthening, teeth bared and eyes glowing. His shield arm shook. Remember Perseus, he thought. Look in the mirror. Perseus defeated the Gorgon by looking in the mirror.
He saw the snaky head in the shield’s surface. All he needed to do was feint to the left, then come in from behind her and he would be able to get her in the neck. He readied himself, the snakes hissing all the time.
Then he realised that something strange was happening to him. He was holding the shield but he could not move his middle finger.
He managed to wrench his gaze away from her eyes and focus on his hand.
The Last Gorgon laughed, and her voice filled the cave. ‘They did not tell you that, did they? The Last Gorgon is the most powerful of all. A mirror does not stop me. My gaze pierces all.’
There was a tickling sensation in his finger.
He gasped with horror. He was in a damp cave with only one exit, the Last Gorgon approaching him, and his middle finger was turning into stone.
The Arrow of Apollo is available here.